Key Witness Testifies in Polygamist Warren Jeffs Hearing

Nov. 21, 2006 — -- Fifty-year-old fundamentalist church leader and polygamist Warren Jeffs reportedly showed little emotion during the preliminary hearing yesterday as prosecutors accused him of being an accomplice in two counts of rape.

Jeffs has an estimated 10 thousand followers, who consider him a prophet. Police SWAT teams and snipers were perched above the courthouse, and a mobile command post was set up across the street as Jeffs entered the courtroom in St. George, Utah.

Prosecutors said Jeffs enticed a 14-year-old girl into marriage with her 19-year-old cousin.

The now 20-year-old alleged rape victim, whose identity is being withheld, repeatedly broke down on the stand as she testified in court. She is pregnant by her second husband.

She testified that her wedding night was the worst night in her life. "He was a bully to me. He was my first cousin. I didn't respect him."

The victim told the court she was in the ninth grade at the time she was forced to marry, and said Jeffs told her she would not have a place in heaven unless she obeyed. "I felt completely defeated and trapped," she testified.

She also testified that she sometimes used sex to curry favors from her husband, such as money and time to see her friends. "I would just try to be a willing, submissive wife so that he would feel good about letting me do these things and have these things".

But under questioning from Jeffs' defense team the woman conceded that Jeffs never directly ordered her to have intercourse with her husband.

After the first day of the preliminary hearing, Jeffs attorney, Wally Burgden told reporters on the courthouse steps, "There was no rape," and he predicted a jury would see the case as "religious persecution."

Judge James Shumate will resume the hearing December 14 and decide if there is probable cause for a trial.

In his sermons Jeffs has counseled young women to be "submissive and obedient."

He believes in polygamy. The Church of the Latter Day Saints disavowed polygamy in 1890.